


in this world we'll overcome

by themorninglark



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, POV Alternating, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Canon, Set in Orsterra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28957959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: The first thing Dorothea notices about the mistress of the house is that she is no older than Dorothea herself. Perhaps younger, even. The bracelets on her arm are but plain bronzed bands, and her hair is braided with red ribbons; a simple style, the kind that needs no assistance from anyone else. Yet, though she wears cotton and her feet are bare, she walks as if upon a bolt of silk. She moves like a song on the air.Most of all, as Primrose descends the stairs and Dorothea sees the set of her mouth, the stubborn tilt to her chin, she is certain: this is a woman who was told she was pretty as a girl. Over and over and over again till all the sweetness got burnt out of it.In which Dorothea meets a dancer in the desert, and Primrose hears a story from across the sea.
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault & Primrose Azelhart
Comments: 10
Kudos: 33





	in this world we'll overcome

**Author's Note:**

> The thought that Primrose and Dorothea would be so good together has not left me since I finished Octopath Traveler. I wanted to write something small for them, something just to water this extremely particular patch of desert wildflowers for myself, and it grew into this. 
> 
> I think some passing acquaintance with both games would definitely make this a better read. If you are familiar only with FE3H, it might be understandable (simply because Octopath has a lot less convoluted lore); if you are familiar only with Octopath, it might be a bit challenging!
> 
> Title and epigraph: ["Old Now"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMzC-TehPhY), Rosemary & Garlic  
> Soundtrack: all the desert songs on the Octopath Traveler OST, but especially ["Primrose, the Dancer"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zW8mJH8AlE)

_In this world we’ll overcome  
_ _The autumn days, the hidden sun_

Rumours of the songstress from across the sea come to Primrose, as so many rumours do, on an armful of silks and Tressa’s quick tongue.

“They say she left the Mittelfrank Opera Company to start her own! Can you imagine? Leaving the _Mittelfrank_! And I heard, she was the star there, and…”

Primrose smiles. Tressa’s not even looking up at her as she chatters on. Her hands are busy, busy as always, moving like the wind as she unpacks her bulging satchels with her latest haul from the northwest. Earthen pots delicately glazed, a handful of berries and a branch of plump olives, gemstones the colour of a pomegranate sunrise. Rocks that, to Primrose, look like anything she could pick off the street, but Tressa insists they’re rare stones that ward magic, and if she’d just shoot some dark magic at Tressa right now, she’d see—

Primrose, laughing, demurs.

The black market here in Wellspring, Therion once told her, isn’t what it used to be since it saw the backs of Darius and his gang of ne’er-do-wells. All the better for travelling merchants like Tressa who show their wares in the light. Here by the oasis, there’s already a small crowd starting to flock to her stall.

“Have your travels ever taken you to Fódlan, Tressa?” Primrose asks.

Tressa shakes her head. “It’s _such_ a long journey. This lady and her company, they’ve come so far.”

She’s got that look about her again, the one she gets when they’re standing at the edge of something. An oasis, a dock, the crest of a verdant hill. Like there’s a world out there calling her name. Primrose cannot help but wonder what kind of woman this songstress is, to have taken a journey so long even Tressa has yet to make it herself.

“I wonder what brings her all the way here, then,” she says.

Tressa leans forward. “Ali told me that King Khalim _himself_ heard her sing! In Brigid! And he invited her troupe _personally_.” She pauses, and lets out a tiny sigh. “I’ve never heard an opera. What are they like, Primrose?”

Primrose surveys the cloths that Tressa has brought her, picks out a deep scarlet that seems to grow darker still as the shadows shift across its surface. She has heard many singers in her time, from lands nearby and beyond her reckoning alike. They used to be welcome in Noblecourt. The manor was always full of revelry.

“Operas can be terribly joyous. Or beautifully tragic.”

This silk will make a dress for a fine lady. She can already see it in her mind, how it will flow like wine, how the neckline will dip and the hem will fall. She could say the same for dance as for opera. Does she not know these steps, this score, as well as any songstress from a distant land? Has she not worn her daggers close to her chest, pointed at her throat, until every word she spoke came out pointed?

“Will you go to the opera?” Tressa asks, eyes bright.

“I don’t know,” says Primrose. “I think, some days, I have had quite enough of beautiful tragedy.”

* * *

In Marsalim, the oranges are sweeter in winter. So Dorothea has been told, and she peels one now, open at the heart like a warm sun. The truth is, all fruit does not taste so different to her. It is not so long since the war, not so long since she would have been grateful for even one slice of this orange from an inn’s scrap heap, that she has learned to be picky. Food is food and all food is the same in her belly.

Still, a girl with a basket of fruit outside the palace had been happy, when Dorothea paid her five leaves for this orange. She’d seemed about the age Dorothea herself was, when Manuela found her singing in a fountain. This girl had not been singing. There was music in her voice anyway. There is music, all around the desert; the winds sing like nothing Dorothea has heard in Adrestia.

Dorothea walks on down the glittering colonnade, following where the sun leads her. In the morning, the king’s aide, upon hearing that she wished to explore the town, had tried to insist upon an escort. She’d smiled and thanked him and then slipped out of the royal corridors, gone down to the kitchen to speak with the ladies there instead. She was looking for a house, she said. She had heard tell of it in Sunshade, as her company travelled down to Marsalim. A house that took in women who were down on their luck. Who had nowhere else to go.

_Oh, the Olive House, it’s down the east side of town, with lace blossoms growing up the walls, but do you really want to go there, Miss? It’s in the Red Quarter and that’s no place for a lady like yourself…_

Yes. Yes, she did.

She’s finished the orange by the time she descends another set of stairs, and finds herself looking down a modest row of sandstone buildings. A black cat, curled up in the shade of a palm tree, blinks its eyes open and eyes Dorothea from an imperious distance, as if to remind her she is the stranger here.

“I know,” she murmurs. “Oh, I know.”

At the end of the road, there’s a two-storey house with a vine of white flowers twining up the windowsill, towards the roof. An olive branch hangs upon the door, above the knocker. Here in the dry desert winter, not a blade of grass, not a drop of dew on any of the leaves, the sight of these olives makes Dorothea’s mouth water.

She knocks three times, and waits.

From inside, she hears the soft shuffle of bare feet against a hard floor, murmuring and gentle laughter before the door opens. A woman in a green dress, black hair in loose waves framing a sweet, young face, stands before Dorothea. She drops into a shallow curtsey and gazes up with undisguised curiosity.

“Good day, Miss. Are you here for a dress?”

Over the woman’s shoulder, Dorothea glimpses what looks like a cosy sitting room set up with several work tables, covered in cloth, ribbons, and spools of thread. There are other women there too, some sewing, some measuring and cutting fabrics. Dorothea returns the curtsey, and shakes her head. “This is the Olive House, is it not?”

“Oh!” The woman’s eyes widen. “You’re… you’re the songstress from Fódlan!”

Dorothea smiles. “I’ve been told I speak your language with a terrible accent.”

One hand flies to the woman’s mouth. “I—I beg pardon, my lady, I meant no offense, you speak our language very well indeed—”

“Diyana, go get Miss Primrose and stop talking,” another woman pipes up from behind as a warm laugh spreads through the room, and the unfortunate Diyana flushes a light pink.

“Is Miss Primrose the mistress of this house?” Dorothea asks. “I should very much like to speak with her, then.”

“I’ll get her right away, my lady!” Diyana curtseys again, and retreats hastily towards the stairs at the back.

Dorothea stays where she is in the doorway, clasps her hands in front of her. All the curtains are drawn wide open, and the mid-morning sun is brilliant across the wooden floorboards, across a homespun rug of red and gold, the laps of the women.

“Don’t just stand there, my lady.”

Dorothea looks up. It’s the woman who’d told Diyana to stop talking. She wears her hair in a thick, loose braid, and even as she smiles at Dorothea, her needle hand never stops moving.

“The sand will be blowing through that door before you know it. Come on in.”

How funny, to be called _my lady_ in such a tone, and yet spoken to so familiarly. Dorothea finds she likes it very much. She slips off her shoes and steps into the house, wanders over to the woman’s worktable near the window, where a shimmering cashmere shawl in turquoise lies unfolded in a stray patch of light. It reminds Dorothea of the sea.

“May I?” she asks, holding out a hand.

The woman nods. Dorothea runs her lightly across the ripples of the fabric, marvels at how cool to the touch it is. Such a neat row of stitches along the finished edge. When Dorothea had started at the opera, she’d had to mend her own costumes, for a time; the old wardrobe mistress had her hands full enough with the principals and the girls of the company were expected to pull their weight. Dorothea had never been any good at it. Her hands could throw a lightning bolt across the battlefield, leave all the grass singed and dead, but they could not make something beautiful. _Beautiful._ How she wants to say it, how hollow she fears it sounds in her mouth. Who is she, to be flitting about a generous house like this, dispensing niceties like cheap trinkets?

She gathers herself, says it anyway. No good ever came of keeping a compliment from another woman. “Your workmanship is so lovely.”

“Oh, I couldn’t thread a needle till I came here, my lady. I owe Miss Primrose everything.”

“No, Elenna, you owe me nothing,” comes a voice from the top of the stairs.

The first thing Dorothea notices about the mistress of the house is that she is no older than Dorothea herself. Perhaps younger, even. The bracelets on her arm are but plain bronzed bands, and her hair is braided with red ribbons; a simple style, the kind that needs no assistance from anyone else. Yet, though she wears cotton and her feet are bare, she walks as if upon a bolt of silk. She moves like a song on the air.

Most of all, as Primrose descends the stairs and Dorothea sees the set of her mouth, the stubborn tilt to her chin, she is certain: this is a woman who was told she was pretty as a girl. Over and over and over again till all the sweetness got burnt out of it.

Primrose comes over to Elenna’s table and lays a hand on her arm. “If you owe anyone anything, it is yourself. You had the courage to run away from a terrible man and look for me. Do not put yourself into another debt so easily.”

A mezzo voice. Warm and rich, lower than Dorothea had expected. Elenna gives Primrose a quiet, determined nod, and Primrose returns it before turning to Dorothea. She is silent for a moment, studying Dorothea with a cool, appraising glance.

“So Diyana speaks true? I hardly believed it, when she came in all out of breath and said the songstress from Enbarr was here in our house. What brings a lady like you to the Red Quarter?”

_Why, I could ask the same of you._ Dorothea slides the signet ring off her finger, the one with the royal seal of Edelgard’s court on it, and holds it out to Primrose.

“My name is Dorothea Arnault. I’m here to invite the women of this house to the opera.”

Primrose’s eyes widen. All around them, a sharp intake of breath sweeps through the room, and then the excited chattering breaks out. _The opera! At the grand theatre! Do you think the king himself will be there?_

“Many among the royal tribes will not welcome us,” says Primrose.

Dorothea lets out an impatient huff. “Then my company shall not welcome them.”

The susurration of talk gives way to a mix of laughter and soft, delighted gasps. Primrose says nothing, but there’s the smallest of twitches at the corner of her mouth that wasn’t there before. Dorothea steps forward and extends her hand, palm up.

“Show my ring to the usher. I’ll have a box set aside for you.”

Primrose regards her a moment longer, then closes the distance between them. A smile flashes across her face, and she takes the ring; it vanishes up a sleeve, disappears from sight as swiftly as that smile, like a mirage on the hot sands. Dorothea has seen Yuri slip daggers away with a grace just like that.

“Thank you,” Primrose says. “I’m Primrose. Primrose Azelhart.”

_Azelhart._ Dorothea has not heard the name. Not a house of the Sunlands, then; she had asked the king’s aides to tell her of Triberia, and of those who would come to see her company. Of the music of this land, the songs that marked the changing of seasons. _Oh, there are no seasons in the Sunlands, Miss,_ everyone had told her. Only long days, and hot nights. This was why the oranges were sweeter, they’d said. It never got so cold they froze over.

That mezzo voice rings in her ears, like the sound of a winter thawing, and Dorothea smiles. “See you at the opera, Primrose Azelhart.”

* * *

Primrose leaves the signet ring on her dresser overnight. When she wakes up the next morning, it’s still there. She had not been a strange apparition, then, that songstress. Then again, if Primrose had truly made her up in her mind, she would have been nothing like Dorothea.

She sits up slowly, lets the thin blanket slide off her legs and pool round her ankles and the floor. From the other side of her room, the ring glimmers, warm and faintly crimson in the rising light. Such a weight it had been in her hand, when she took it from Dorothea’s. The memory of it nestles bright in her palm. The weight of something real.

How often had she woken, and hoped everything was a dream; how often had the waking been the nightmare? But today there is a promise on her dresser and a songstress’s voice in her head, and when Primrose has fixed her hair and broken bread with the women of the house, she puts on her dancer’s sandals and goes to seek the jewel of Marsalim.

At the back entrance of the Grand Theatre, an unassuming door propped open by a rock, there’s a young man bringing in what looks like an enormous bolt of cloth bigger than himself. Curtains, if Primrose does not mistake her guess.

“Greetings,” she calls, and takes the ring from her sleeve, showing it to him. “May I speak with Miss Dorothea?”

The stagehand shifts the bundle of curtains in his arms and attempts an awkward bow. “Miss Dorothea and the company are over at Clan Leader Nadil’s, my lady. A private performance, I heard, they’ll be away a while—”

“That’s quite all right,” says Primrose. “I can wait.”

She closes her fist around the ring, and follows the stagehand down a long corridor.

The echoes in the strangely silent backstage welcome her, even as they settle round her body like a cloak she can’t shake off. She once danced with different shadows, and she would sooner forget the last time she was in a theatre like this. Yet Primrose finds she moves, still, with a familiarity that comes back to her like an old refrain; here is the spot to wait in the wings for a cue, here is the place the dancers gather to rest in between shows. There is only one dressing room, filled with mirrors and racks of gowns far too warm for the desert. Velvet and lace for days. No separate room for the prima donna of the company, then. It seems Dorothea gets dressed and does her makeup with everyone else.

When Dorothea returns, Primrose hears footsteps on floorboards before she sees her, a breathless figure throwing a door open, her smile growing radiant when she spots Primrose standing among the dresses.

“Omar said a lady was here for me. I couldn’t _imagine_ who it would be, but I’m glad it’s you.”

How easily these things fall from Dorothea’s mouth. She barely knows Primrose, and already, she seems to have decided they are friendly. _She was ever so nice, Miss,_ Diyana had said, when she came running up the stairs to find Primrose in the sitting room. _Such a fine lady, and she speaks our tongue, too!_

Primrose shakes a length of tape from her sleeve. “Elenna told me you liked the shawl she was making. The blue cashmere.”

Dorothea’s eyes brighten. “It was beautiful, yes. But what—”

“Hold still,” says Primrose, and Dorothea does. She’s used to this, Primrose can tell right away; knows how to straighten her posture, hold her neck steady, as Primrose runs her tape across the length of her shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Dorothea asks.

Primrose smiles. “We’re making you a dress, Miss Dorothea Arnault.”

Dorothea’s brows furrow, and she opens her mouth, but Primrose cuts off the protest before it comes out. “The women cannot wait to come to the opera. Let us do this for you. Do you like blue, then?”

She touches the back of Dorothea’s hand with her fingertips, extends her arm upward and out. There is a scar that looks like a burn mark in Dorothea’s palm.

“I would be delighted with any colour you think fit,” says Dorothea. “But do you always personally take customer measurements?”

“Perhaps I simply wanted to size you up myself.”

Dorothea laughs. “You speak frankly, my lady.”

“There is no need to call me that,” Primrose murmurs. She takes a step back, starts to slowly roll up her tape as she studies Dorothea from head to toe. She is wearing earrings of gold shaped like little fans, inset with gemstones the colour of blood. They are striking against her dark hair and green eyes. Primrose can see it already, the shape of a dress for a woman like this. Not so different from something she might have worn herself, years ago, before everything.

Dorothea tilts her head to one side. “But you are noble-born, are you not?”

Primrose looks up, meets Dorothea’s gaze. It is kind, and knowing.

“Yes,” she says.

_Faith shall be your shield._ She had been so long shrouded in darkness, it feels strange, still, to admit it. So long had she kept her secrets, bided her time as she sharpened her dagger, sharpened that faith. The time for lying about who she is is years past. Only, there are things buried in the sands of this desert; there are truths about who she is and what she has become. The sands shift, and they remember, and forget.

Dorothea surprises her again, then, for the second time in quick succession. She steps forward and clasps Primrose’s hands in her own. They are rougher than Primrose would have imagined. She thinks of that scar, of these hands catching fire.

“My lady—”

“Primrose, please.”

“Prim, I would ask a thing of you.”

What a familiar nickname. No one has ever called Primrose by a nickname, not even her father. Primrose finds herself quite at a loss for words.

“Will you show me around the town? I have been performing in clan leaders’ residences all week, and I am tired of opulence, and being indoors.”

“I am not of Marsalim,” Primrose points out. “King Khalim would have a more suitable guide for you, I am sure.”

“Oh, I have no need of more of his dull nobles! I should like to spend more time in your company.”

Primrose raises her eyebrows. “You speak frankly too, Miss Dorothea.”

Dorothea squeezes Primrose’s hands lightly, and lets them go. That easy smile of hers lingers round the corners of her mouth. A dance in waiting.

“How much time do you have today?” Primrose asks.

“Enough,” says Dorothea, and laughs.

* * *

In the market, they wander from stall to stall, between sunshade and dappled patches of golden light, spilling across the sandy paths from in between the palm leaves. Dorothea loves those palms. She has never seen anything like them in all of Fódlan. They are common in Almyra, if Claude is to be believed; there, he says, they yield dates so sweet as to put Noa fruit to shame, and when he was a boy, he’d escape lessons from Nader and take his bow to the plantations instead, shooting off bunches of ripe dates till his pockets were full of them.

_Why is it that I can imagine you doing just that, even now?_

Claude laughed. _You’ll have to come and see for yourself._

What a wild thought! To be invited to Almyra by the King, one day. The Dorothea who had bathed in fountains would never have imagined that. But here she is now, in Orsterra, and she has traversed a sea far wider than Fódlan’s Throat, and she is walking through the Sunlands’ capital with a noble-born woman who lives in the poorest part of town, who wears worn-out dancer’s sandals on her feet, who pauses, now, at a stall that smells like a garden of wildflowers.

“Mistress Hanifa’s honey is the best in Marsalim,” says Primrose, and the woman behind the stall beams, offers Dorothea a piece of flatbread with honey to try. Dorothea takes her time to savour it. _Best_ , Primrose had said, not _sweetest_ , and as the morsel dissolves on her tongue she understands why; it is rich and full-bodied and tastes like amber and a northern autumn.

Before they take their leave, Hanifa takes a basket of bread and honey from under her table and holds it out to Primrose. “For the House.”

“Mistress, I can’t. Let me pay you, please.”

“I’ll not hear of it, Miss Primrose—”

They go back and forth for a while. A familiar dance, or so it seems, to Dorothea; it ends when Primrose takes Hanifa’s hand in both of hers, presses a fistful of leaves into her palm and closes her fingers around them, slips for a moment into a dialect Dorothea doesn’t recognise and says something that makes Hanifa’s eyes crinkle.

“Everyone here seems to know you, Miss _Not-of-Marsalim_ ,” Dorothea remarks, as they walk on.

Primrose slips the basket over her arm. “A friend of mine happened to slay a beast that was plaguing this town. A great huntress.”

“Oh? That sounds like a story.”

“It is.” The corners of Primrose’s lips curve up.

“I love stories,” says Dorothea. “Every opera is a wonderful story.”

She stops in front of a stall stocked with strange curios of bronze and gold, scarabs of beetles in mid-flight, statuettes of gods she doesn’t recognise. One of the bracelets is adorned with olive leaves in fine gold metalwork, twining round the band. Primrose reaches to pick it up and turn it over in the light.

“I saw my story on stage, once. A man I once loved made me watch a grotesque parody of my father’s murder.”

She speaks of her father’s murder like it is one of her ribs. A blade of breath that scores a line between her heart and the rest of her body.

“What happened to that man?” Dorothea asks.

“I wandered the world looking for him,” says Primrose. “And I killed him.”

Is that a particular and bitter sorrow, that tinges the music of her voice? Is it a scattering of ashes, parched as the land all around them; is it what Dorothea felt herself, the first time she killed a man?

Primrose runs her fingertip across the veins of a filigreed leaf. Her touch is steady. Her hands do not shake.

Dorothea reaches for a fistful of change from her pocket, offers it to the curio merchant in exchange for the olive bracelet, and reaches for those hands. A live flame cupped in her palms. How many nights she has stayed up, among rubble and ruin, to hold on to heat like this.

“My dear Prim,” she says, “such a man had it coming.”

Primrose slips her arm through Dorothea’s, and smiles. The midday sun is high above them now, their shadows merely a sliver at their feet; it is hard to imagine they could grow long, in a place as warm as this.

“Come. I would show you the olive grove.”

Dorothea blinks into the light. “ _The_ olive grove? You cannot mean there is only one in the whole of Marsalim.”

Primrose laughs, leads them past the rest of the market stalls, past another tavern and herbalist’s, down a broad, dusty road where the houses grow sparse, the space between buildings ever wider as they walk. Where the town ends and the wilderness begins, Dorothea can no longer quite tell. And then, rising from the arid earth, she sees it: rows upon rows of trees on the edge of town, lush and green against the vast, sun-drenched hills of the desert beyond.

“There are other groves,” says Primrose, walking ahead. She raises her hand, plucks an olive and holds it out to Dorothea. “But none that grow olives of life.”

Dorothea takes the olive, turns it over in her hand. Such an unassuming thing, she might have passed over it altogether, had the chefs seen fit to serve up a bowl of them at one of Edelgard’s dinners. Tiny wonders never ceased. “It is true, then? In Orsterra, these little fruits restore your health? I thought the king’s aides were pulling my leg.”

“Oh, it’s true enough. The terrain here in the Sunlands yields the best olives. They have a flavour to put the kitchens of Noblecourt to shame.”

“Is that where your family is from? Noblecourt?” Dorothea asks.

Primrose nods. She is silent, for a moment; she stands with her back straight and her hands clasped behind her back, facing the shimmering sands. Such poise, fit for a beautiful stage.

“I escaped to Sunshade when my father was killed, and danced, to survive. I never thought I would come back to the Sunlands, after everything,” says Primrose. She pauses, presses her lips together and lets out a soft breath. “I did not think about what to do next. But I went back to Noblecourt, to visit my father’s grave, and then found I could not stay.”

A warm wind shakes the branches above. Dorothea tilts her face upwards. The birds are different here, the olive grove bears fruit the likes of which she has never seen in her life, yet the sky looks the same everywhere she goes.

“The first time we met, you called me _the songstress from Enbarr_. Do you remember?”

Primrose gives her a curious glance. “Are you not?”

“Well, I don’t know. I wasn’t born in Enbarr. After the Mittelfrank took me in, the opera became my home, and my world, so I suppose if anything, I was raised there. But then I left, and the world is _so_ much larger than I’d imagined. Perhaps home is wherever I can sing.”

“You could sing anywhere,” says Primrose. She twirls on one ankle, then, an elegant twirl; her bracelets jangle brass-bold against each other as she does, and one hand trails out at her side, inscribes an arc in the air full of purpose. Even in a gesture as simple as this, turning back to to look at Dorothea, Primrose cannot help but dance. Dorothea smiles.

“Exactly so. And what about you? You love dance.”

“Yes. I do. Once, men tried to take my dance from me and turn it into an ugly thing. But I am still here. And I am still dancing. Is it strange? Do you think me strange, returning to a place I once danced for a cruel master?”

What a question. What a declaration. Dorothea’s heart is a desert bloom in her chest, defiant and wild.

“You danced for him, but he never owned you. You were your own woman here, were you not, Prim? All the while.”

Primrose holds her head high. Her gaze never wavers. The smile that spreads across her face is quiet and private. “You do love stories, Dorothea.”

“If you come to the opera,” says Dorothea, “I shall show you one to remember.”

* * *

In the south of Marsalim, where the silver-tipped palms brush the night sky, Primrose’s bare feet find the seam between city and horizon, between stars and firelight. She once danced on the naked sand, just like this. No music save the sirocco’s howl, the rhythm of her own breath, the sound her blade made through the still, still air.

What a strange sense of grace Sealticge herself must have, that she and Dorothea should find their paths crossed in a place like this. She had returned to the Sunlands, thinking she could save women like Yusufa, from pleasure palaces or worse; she had built a house of her own from nothing but faith. She had lived by her family’s words, all these years, and thought that was all to it. But Dorothea had come, speaking to her of home, and leaving, asking Primrose if she thought a life-giving tree might grow, should she bring the pit of this olive back to her land and plant it in Gronder Field.

_In Fódlan_ , Dorothea told her, _we are beholden to no gods_. Not so long ago, people marked with a divine favour used to rule over the rest of the Empire, never mind their character. She herself does not possess one of these favours, these _crests_. People in the academy thought little of her for it. For nothing more than the luck of her birth.

Strength, and weakness. What a false balance lies between them. How easy it is, to wear one as a cloak to mask the other. _Fódlan does not sound so different from Orsterra_ , Primrose said.

_Men everywhere are the same._ Dorothea laughed, scarlet on the wind, scarlet on the setting sun, and Primrose heard her own laughter ring out too.

One million grains of sand beneath her feet. She might never see the smallest grain at the furthest end of the desert, beyond the Grimsand Ruins, and she has lived too long and too hard, shed too much blood to be wistful about it. So much space. So much sky. What trail should she hope to leave behind, knowing the sand will bury her footprints, rewrite her story? Is it the unmarked path ahead she should be looking to?

Gazing at the stars will bring her no answers. Primrose raises one hand to the night, feels her magic begin to rise upon her palm. In the distance, the call of a owl; nearer by, the scent of white sage and desert honeysuckle.

She turns around, finds her way back to the Olive House through darkened paths. The women have retired upstairs for the night. Dorothea’s dress, nearly done, lies half-folded upon the table in the centre of the sewing room.

Primrose runs her hand down a sleeve, picks up a pair of scissors, and goes to work.

* * *

> My dearest Edie,
> 
> Your letter reached me here in Marsalim just before our last show! We leave in two days, so indeed I shall be back in Enbarr for the turn of the Lone Moon, unless the winds have other ideas. They so often do, as you know. But we were fortunate to have smooth sailing here to Orsterra, and Grandport is as magnificent a seaside capital as you have ever seen. It put me in mind of Derdriu as soon as I stepped off the ship.
> 
> When was the last time you took a holiday, Edie? The region they call the Sunlands here truly is like nowhere on Fódlan. The terrain is harsh, the glare of the sun relentless, the winter nights long and hot. But out of this parched earth, there grow miraculous olives and pomegranates. You can stand upon the rooftops and look down a whole colonnade of palm trees. The tribes are quick to share their water with each other, and with strangers, too, precious as it is.
> 
> Oh, I do wish I had Bern’s talent for painting a scene, or Lin’s attention to all the oddest little details! All I can really tell you, I’m afraid, is that the desert sings, and as there is no way for me to bottle that song and send it back to you, you shall have to take my word for it. You shall have to go to that balcony of yours, and look up at the sky, and imagine a place where the sand stretches as far as the clouds.
> 
> I confess, I don’t know that I could have imagined such a place, had I not seen it with my own eyes. But it is real, and oh, Edie, there are wonders and surprises to be found in the farthest reaches of this world, and space, still, in your heart, for the people you meet.
> 
> It gladdens me to hear you are none too vexed with affairs of state. _I_ will be vexed, should I return only to have Ferdie tell me you have been pacing the corridors at night again. You know as well as I do that man is incapable of lying. How I miss all of you! Yet I have not been lonely here. Are you smiling, as you read this? Do you murmur to yourself, _oh, that Dorothea, she makes friends so easily, as I never did_?
> 
> I don’t think that is wholly true, you know. There have been few in my life I hold close. I consider it a marvel of the world, to encounter such a person.
> 
> I expect this letter might reach you in Enbarr before I do. When I see you again, I shall tell you of a house with an olive branch upon the door, and its mistress, and sing you the music of the desert.
> 
> Yours ever,  
> Dorothea

* * *

The Grand Theatre of Marsalim is modest, by day. It’s at night, when the moon is full, that its full splendour glitters against the sky. The first time Primrose saw it, she had stopped where she stood along that valley of palms, watched the stars light up the sandstone dome, the path beneath her feet. The pool in the courtyard, fit for wishes. By day, the people of Marsalim flock to it as an oasis; the water is clear and fresh, and cool in the throat. When she and Ophilia had brought that man from Everhold to to King Khalim’s palace, left him drawing up dreams and flights of golden fancy, she had never imagined something as breathtaking as this.

It is a beautiful place. Primrose has stayed away from it for three long years. Now, she finds herself at its doorstep twice in the space of a week. As they draw closer, she pauses to touch a fingertip to the flickering braziers by the doors, knows the glow for light and fire magic as surely as she feels that flame burn within her. They will stay warm and bright all night long.

The usher lets them in as Dorothea had promised, and shows Primrose and the women to a box in the dress circle. The seats are made of lush red velvet, impossibly soft.

“I never thought I could set foot in a place like this,” Diyana whispers.

“Hold your head high, Diyana,” says Primrose. “You belong here as much as any of these nobles.”

As the others settle in behind her, Primrose goes to stand the railing of the box, gazes upon at the crowd streaming in. Was there a time she would have felt more at home with those people? When those were her people? The Sunlands have hewn a different kind of highborn family from those of Noblecourt, it is true, but these ladies know leisure, wear silk upon their shoulders, know how to tell a Frostlands grape from a Woodlands variant.

The stage below them is a grand affair, framed in gold velour and tassels. Above the proscenium arch, the crest of Triberia; above that still, a great curved ceiling inscribed with no constellations of stars, only leaves and branches, heavy with fruit, and vines, woven so the entire dome is as a bower of green and plenty.

Primrose does not know stages like this. She has danced in all manner of broken places, for the weary and the heartless, the poor and their masters, but never beneath the auspices of a generous harvest, a giving sky.

She takes her seat just as the lights go down. A hush descends upon the house, and Dorothea steps out onto stage.

There had been a whole rack of stunning gowns in that dressing room, each more beautiful than the one before, but tonight, Dorothea wears none of them. Clothed in a plain brown dress with a peaked cap upon her head, she turns her face towards the light, and begins to sing.

* * *

After the last of the curtain calls, after the applause and the flowers and the fruit baskets that pour into the reception hall—how these folk love their fruit! it is, Primrose has told her, a custom of the Sunlands, where they are justly proud of the richness of their yield—

After all of that, King Khalim himself tells Dorothea that Lady Primrose is waiting for her, and Dorothea curtseys her leave to head back to the dressing room.

There she is, silhouetted in shadows and lamplight. In her arms, she holds a bundle wrapped in cream. She turns to face the door as Dorothea enters.

“Prim, for shame! You never told me you were friends with His Majesty.”

Primrose shakes her head. “It is H’aanit who is the real hero. I simply happened to be with her.”

“As I simply happened to be in Fhirdiad, I am sure.”

Dorothea’s cap, now between her hands, has grown worn and soft, gained more than a few patches and stains since the day she walked into Garreg Mach. She had thought it lost in the war, for a time; it was Hubert, of all people, who had found it again. Where, she will probably never know. Hubert is terribly infuriating that way.

She sets it down on a dressing table, and Primrose comes round, begins to unwrap her bundle as well.

“It was a story to remember, as you promised,” says Primrose. “The war… it was bloody, was it not? And painful. And yet, you had to fight for what you believed in.”

Dorothea opens her mouth, finds she has no words at the ready. But Primrose touches her arm, and she says nothing more, too, and then she unfolds the last layer of cloth and steps back.

The dress is the desert itself, given breath, made alive. It is the colour of the sunset over dusky dunes. As Dorothea reaches to run her fingers lightly across the flowing organza, she can already see the opera where she’ll wear this dress; it is not an opera for a stage such as this. It is one for the streets, one for wide open spaces under an unfettered sky.

“I love it. I shall wear it with great joy.”

Primrose smiles. “The women of the house worked hard. They are delighted we were able to finish it in time. And from me… I added this.”

She reaches to flip one of the long sleeves up, and when Dorothea sees what Primrose has to show her, she presses her hands to her mouth with delight, and fails entirely to suppress the laugh that blossoms from within.

“Whatever do you think I could keep up those slits, my dear Prim?”

“Oh, a handkerchief, as ladies do. Secret notes. Daggers, if you please.”

“I do please,” says Dorothea. “I am utterly thrilled.”

Primrose lets the sleeve fall from her hand. She glances towards the corridor outside, and back at Dorothea. “There is another gift I would give you, before you leave. May we?”

So Dorothea leads Primrose out of the dressing room, through the curtains, upon the empty stage. The musicians have stopped their playing, and the audience is long gone. Only silence remains, and echoes, and the aria of this last night in the desert; Dorothea will remember it long after she has set sail from Grandport, sing its refrain upon the tides that carry her home.

There are no spotlights to be seen. Primrose steps out into the centre of the stage as if there is one, raises her arms, and tilts her head up. And Dorothea sees it. The sweetness of the sun upon her face. She hears it, the music as Primrose begins to sway. The wind sweeps the sparkling sands across their feet. They are no longer standing on a stage. They are in an olive grove, and Primrose is holding out her hands, and she says, _dance with me, Dorothea_.

Dorothea steps out of the wings, and into the light.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for coming on this journey with Primrose and Dorothea. I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/lightveils) ♥


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